Lord Tim

Typically it goes something like this: A pre-shaping EQ to highpass the vocal, and add anything I think is missing from the raw mic sound Then usually a fairly hot compressor (although I might leave this out if I know I'm adding a fair bit of grit later, or I want the vocal to be more dynamic). Then I'll usually have a de-esser next. Then I like to split my vocal into 2 paths: one clean, and one where I can dial in a bit of grit underneath that clean vocal. That gives it hair but still retains the original clarity. On the grit path, I'll usually EQ it as well to not crowd or muddy up the main vocal sound. That then gets recombined back to the one path. If necessary, I'll de-ess again if it needs it after all of that stuff (usually not necessary). Then I'll do a final run of compression, usually something with a bit of character, and a final EQ to make it fit into the track better. I usually don't gate anything to get rid of noises between phrases, I much prefer to use clip gain automation or cutting the gaps out manually. It's more work but much more predictable results. Bluecats's Patchwork is great for setting up complex chains like this, but you can also do some great stuff with a FX Chain Preset too, so you can just drop the one thing in and make tweaks rather than trying to recreate it each time. For sends, I'll typically have a global reverb that I use to make everything sound like it's in the same space, maybe about 1.2s, and EQ'd to both low and high pass it, to clean it up. I'll usually run 2 or 3 delays of various times, not necessarily all at once, so I can automate certain words, or use it as sustain for long notes, or as an overall "fill" effect if the vocal sounds a little spiky. And I'll usually have a Waves Doubler on there too to give things a little stereo spread and slight pitch shifting. This is usually pretty quiet though, so you don't notice it unless you bypass it. But it's all song and genre dependent. This is flexible enough to use for both folk and death metal if you tweak it properly. EDIT: Actually, give attached "LT Vocals.fxc" FX Chain a go - save it and drop it into your Cakewalk Content > Cakewalk Core > FX Chain Presets folder, and it'll appear in the Audio FX browser inside Cakewalk. This is a fair recreation of how I like to do my chains using only stock Cakewalk plugins, which needed a little bit of fiddling with doing split paths and de-essing, but it does the job. I've exposed all of the common controls to save you digging into each plugin, but it's editable if you need to do any fine adjustments. Yes, that *is* TH3 - the guitar effects package - in there. It's a surprisingly good channel splitter and grit-adder! LT Vocals.fxc

Not directly, no, and it really depends on the driver itself if you're able to change the latency inside CbB directly - some drivers don't expose that and you need to go to their control panel app to adjust latency. A handy shortcut for getting to the latency preferences is to click the sample rate / bit rate display that's directly under the time display on the Transport Module:

No, I mean it's undoable, so if you change your mind later, too bad - you're stuck with it. This is the same in any DAW. The important thing to remember about normalising is it works on the loudest peak, rather than the apparent loudness of the track, so let's say you have 5 different vocal clips on track and you run normalise on them, one of those clips might have a big plosive "P" sound at the start of a word that's 20dB louder than anything else on the track . It'll take that as your loudest thing and only turn that clip up as far as it can without that "P" clipping. The actual clip itself could sound dramatically quieter than all of the others and make your mixing life hell later. This is why I recommend : A: getting it right (or better) at the source first - but being a little careful that if you use hardware compression or limiting going in that you understand that'll be baked in to the sound that's recorded, so either love the sound of it or just use limiting to catch any rogue peaks, or B: turn down the volume of everything else in the project so you can hear your vocal track and turn your monitors up, and know that once it's mixed it may be quieter until it's mastered, or ? turn up the gain slider or volume slider on each vocal track to make it louder - that'll turn everything on that track up by a specific amount, regardless of any loud clip sections, and then use dynamics plugins (compressor, etc) on the track to even out the levels. That'll make everything sound apparently louder and will likely be something that you'd want to use on the vocal track anyway. ... Also, don't type C : on here like I just did above or it'll turn your point into a smiley face that's hard to delete ?

This has nothing to do with affiliate links. You are posting this in the wrong section. The correct place is HERE: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/forum/34-deals/

You *can*.... but it's kind of not that elegant. Solo all of the tracks you want to hear as your "A" and then select all of the tracks in the project, and then CTRL+Click one of the Solo buttons. That'll invert the selection for your "B" and then do the same to get back to "A" again. Works well, but if you click away to anywhere or change selections, you have to remember to re-select everything again to make this all work.

Sorry, I misunderstood that part. Yeah, weird - there's certainly nothing wrong with file import on the last version(s) - I've literally imported hundreds of files during a client album mix and had no issues at all. Do projects with existing audio play ok? Especially ones on the same drive as where you were trying to import the failed files? I'm wondering if it's a permissions thing or a network drive issue?

There's really no advantage to absolutely belting the signal in a DAW because the noise floor will be too low to care about in practice. On tape, we used to have to try to get the most out of everything going in to end up with a clean recording. I'd recommend what was said - turn everything down, then boost it all at the end if it's too quiet for you... or simply turn your volume up. Don't normalize, that's a destructive process. Use volume or gain adjustments or automation envelopes. Don't forget that most commercial music is mastered too, so what people give the mastering engineer is likely as quiet as you're hearing, and it gets boosted up by the engineer. If anything, giving a hot mix to a mastering engineer is a bit of a bad idea because they want some headroom to work with. If the vocal you're trying to record is super dynamic, other that suggesting working on both vocal and mic technique (move in closer for the quiet parts, move away for the belts), running a hardware limiter after the mic and preamp but before your soundcard input is a solution. Something like a Empirical Labs Distressor is a common choice here.

You could use an expander, which is kind of like a gradual gate rather than an on/off kind of thing but I definitely agree with the others here - you'll get much more predictable results by editing this by hand. I personally always cut out the gaps between each vocal phrase and do fades on either side to stop any pops and clicks, and then automate breaths later if they're too distracting. In some cases I'll cut them out entirely, or even move them to a different track for different processing if I like the sound of having breaths in general but I want to do something a little more heavy-handed on the vocal itself.

...wow. I saw this post while I was reading the forum on my phone and it made me actually get up and turn on a DAW to try it out. How did I never know about this after all these years? ? I think if this can be changed to per-FX rather than per-bin, this would be super useful!

Is this the only file that fails to import? It's possibly a corrupted audio file if so.

Further to this, definitely make sure there's no stray markers anywhere. If it has any extra ones between the transients you want, it turns into a horrible mess with most algorithms.

Cakewalk itself can't make a computer bluescreen - this is likely a hardware issue or a driver issue. The first thing I would check is any cables plugged into your audio interface are in properly. If it's easy enough to do, I'd also have a quick check of any other cables in your computer, both inside and out. The next thing I would check is the Event Viewer to see what it said the error was so you have a bit of a clue where to start looking next. But an error scan on your drives is probably a good idea regardless. Check that all of your windows updates are installed, and the latest drivers for your audio interface. After doing all that, if Cakewalk doesn't open, you may need to delete some of its config files and have it recreate them, but start with that first.

Same with mine, but you definitely have to pick the right arm once your monitor gets over a certain size because they can get pretty heavy - some arms just aren't up to the task.

Sounds like it's in "S mode". Have a look at THIS page and see if it helps.

Definitely a sample rate thing. The more info you can give us about your system, the better. Especially tell us your audio interface (if any, if it's inbuilt, let us know what type it is, eg: Realtek), and what driver model you're using (eg: manufacturer ASIO drivers, WASAPI, or some other driver type). What likely is happening is Windows is set up for a different sample rate than your project, but start with this stuff and we can work backwards from there.

Yep, I agree with Dave - this doesn't look like it's plugin related at all and the crash is occurring in Cakewalk itself. The crash dump in particular says it's not a plugin. My gut is telling me this is possibly language related, possibly something where its not parsing some Cyrillic character properly. The devs need to check this one out for sure. @IRAKLI KVANCHIANI in the case that a Cakewalk dev doesn't see this thread, get this stuff off to support@cakewalk.com so it can get sorted out.

^^ If you really want help with this problem, this is the post you want to pay attention to. You can complain, and say it's a widespread problem (it's not, have a look around the forum - lots of people coming here with issues to solve, so nobody is shy or lazy about reporting problems), or you can actually get the cause of the problem off to the devs to tell you exactly what the problem is and solve it for you.

We need to know more information before anyone can help you. Tell us what audio interface you have, which driver mode you're using and what your project sample rate is set to for a start.

Please start a new thread in THIS FORUM and list your computer specifications, and provide a screen shot of what you're seeing. This is not common behaviour for most users.

I think we've all had these derp kind of moments. Glad you got it sorted out! It might be a good idea to edit your original post and change the title to [solved] so others can learn from it.

With the track open so we can see all of the controls, can you take a screenshot of your main window of Cakewalk, also making sure we see the control bar at the top of the window as well? My guess is either effects are bypassed somewhere, input echo isn't enabled or, failing all of that, in Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording, there should be a check mark in Always Stream Audio through FX.

Absolutely! I don't really notice the curve too much with this huge thing, in fact I'd probably have more of a problem with the edges feeling too far away if it was flat. But man, it's not cheap and it takes a LOT of desk space (not to mention I have a laptop on a stand on either side as well, so it's like the Starship Enterprise in here ?) EDIT: I will say, however, it took me about a week to get used to it. Crazy amounts of real estate and just learning where to dock windows, etc. Fancy Zones becomes your friend

Yep: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTBUyfKBlum/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link After originally using 2 regular monitors, the option of having this monster in front of me being essentially being 2 27" 1440p monitors without the annoying gap in the middle is fantastic. I don't think I could go back to a 16:9 monitor again after this and be comfortable.

Yeah, really weird. That's basically a starved buffer error, which at 2048 shouldn't be a thing at all on what sounds like a pretty beefy system like you have. If this was an isolated thing, I would point the finger at a crosslinked audio file on your SSD or something like that. With Cakewalk closed, if you do an error check on the drive this file is on, do you get anything back? But if this is persisting across different projects, it's an odd case for sure! Does this happen if you bounce the problem track to a new track instead of freezing it?

What was the dropout code displayed in the message?